[HN Gopher] A.I. and Social Media Contribute to 'Brain Rot'
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A.I. and Social Media Contribute to 'Brain Rot'
Author : pretext
Score : 194 points
Date : 2025-11-07 15:34 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| cramsession wrote:
| Television rotted the brains of a good portion of the boomer
| generation. Ditto for garbage like People magazine. If you watch
| some old TV ads from the 80s, it's scary at how bad they are. The
| variety of content from modern, connected platforms definitely
| can be harmful but it leaves people less susceptible to
| manipulation than a dozen TV stations and yellow journalism.
| reactordev wrote:
| Exactly. The article should just say "Mass consumption of media
| causes brain rot" because since 1900 that's all it's doing.
|
| Radio programs that caused mass hysteria. TV advertising that
| caused people to cook plastics into their food. The
| advertisements for hair loss. For ED. For testosterone, for
| bunions, warts, insomnia, apnea, eczema, droopy eye, eye bags,
| teeth, dogs teeth, cats bum, extended car warranty, leasing a
| car, phones, computers, vbros, and all those TikTok "hacks"
| which are just mcguyver poor people hacks.
|
| Brain rot comes from watching others live their lives...
|
| Get outside, do something.
| gdulli wrote:
| Past media may have prepped us with some brain rot that's now
| causing people to prostrate themselves to the tech giants in
| exchange for not having to work as hard. But that doesn't mean
| that an acceleration of social media, slop, and loss of
| transparency on the information we take in isn't going to be
| extremely worse.
| AaronAPU wrote:
| Reading this, I have no idea which of the thousands of new
| media silos you inhabit. But they all tell different mutually
| exclusive narratives.
|
| So statistically, even if one is purely honest and accurate,
| most likely you aren't in that one particular silo.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Trouble is, the "silos" in both new _and_ traditional media
| aren 't necessarily mutually exclusive. See https://old.reddi
| t.com/r/oddlyterrifying/comments/13akipf/a_... for example.
| bgwalter wrote:
| Yet anti-war protests were orders of magnitude stronger in the
| 1980s, Iran Contra was treated like real scandal [1] and
| politicians occasionally had to resign for misbehavior.
| Political awareness was much stronger than now and economic
| issues had far more screen time.
|
| The legacy media was better though than now, despite obvious
| missteps like hyping up the second Iraq war.
|
| [1] No one would care these days about old weapons being sold
| to Iran to finance a coup in, say, Venezuela. Of course one
| would use a coin scam to generate slush funds nowadays.
| dougb5 wrote:
| As dumb as People magazine is/was, it is not algorithmically
| optimized to hook its readers through constant notifications
| and rewards. I'd say social media has the edge in terms of its
| ability to cause sleep deprivation, cognitive fragmentation,
| and addiction, especially in kids.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > it leaves people less susceptible to manipulation
|
| less ?
|
| We went from a few selected and hand crafted local propaganda
| sources to world wide fully automated propaganda machines...
|
| If I had to choose I'd chose the former personally. Information
| is always opinionated but i'd rather have my local flavor of
| propaganda over 3 channels and 2 newspapers rather than having
| foreign propaganda from all around the world drilling in the
| heads of my neighbours and family members 24/7.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _Television rotted the brains of a good portion of the boomer
| generation._
|
| Don't discount the effect of lead in paint, pipes, gasoline,
| etc. It's not a surprise that Republicans try to roll back
| regulations that remove lead.
| tharne wrote:
| What is the argument being made here? That we've done stupid
| and damaging things to our brains in the past so we just stop
| worrying and just double down?
| ares623 wrote:
| Been seeing this argument more and more. Is there a name for
| it?
|
| "Bad thing X has been happening forever.
|
| AI _guarantees_ X will exponentially get worse, but it lets me
| do (arguably) good thing Y so it's okay."
| Alex2037 wrote:
| "things that compete with legacy media are le bad", article
| #20735.
| everdrive wrote:
| Well yes, they are. It's just that a lot of legacy media is
| also bad. They can both be correct.
| Alex2037 wrote:
| how many wars did LLMs and the social media instigate? the
| shitrag here did at least one.
| everdrive wrote:
| LLMs are quite new, so you might honestly want to save your
| comment and return to it in a few years. For social media,
| I think you can point to directly social media with regard
| to the Arab Spring as well as the Rohingya genocide, and
| many, many mass shooting events. I'm sure there's more,
| that's just off the top of my head.
|
| Much like legacy media, social media is certainly not
| _wholly_ or necessarily even _primarily_ responsible, but I
| think there's little doubt it played a role.
| Alex2037 wrote:
| >LLMs are quite new, so you might honestly want to save
| your comment and return to it in a few years.
|
| okay, call me when an LLM begins to append "furthermore,
| I think that X must be destroyed" to its outputs.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > how many wars did LLMs and the social media instigate?
|
| At least one already. I suspect your comment won't age
| well.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-
| facebook...
|
| > Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the U.N. Independent
| International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, told
| reporters that social media had played a "determining role"
| in Myanmar.
|
| You could probably count the war in Gaza to some extent.
| Alex2037 wrote:
| >Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the U.N. Independent
| International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, told
| reporters that social media had played a "determining
| role" in Myanmar.
|
| "played a role" != "instigated". everything "played a
| role" there.
|
| their fucking government did it.
|
| >You could probably count the war in Gaza to some extent.
|
| are you for real?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > "played a role" != "instigated"
|
| You took out a pretty important word.
|
| > are you for real?
|
| Yes? Both sides of the conflict used social media heavily
| to justify their actions and generate support for
| continuing the conflict.
| shagie wrote:
| Gift link:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/technology/personaltech/a...
| Narciss wrote:
| thx
| randycupertino wrote:
| I'm in a local facebook group for my town where people post
| hiking pics, bird pics, local business updates, contractor
| recommendations etc. I am annoyed to see "brain rot" videos
| starting to take over the page.
|
| There is one dude promoting his succulent repotting/resale
| business and he's posted like 5-8 ai generated surfer dude monkey
| surfing and partying with his potted succulents just in the last
| week. I opened the comments expecting to see other people
| complaining, "hey buddy take your ai-spam elsewhere" but all the
| comments were "cute!" "adorable" and "love this!" I just ended up
| blocking this dude but I am sad for humanity lol.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| On modern social media, even if you had a group full of smart
| and reasonable people, the platform itself is injecting crap
| that may well drive out many of them.
|
| I rececently returned to Reddit since there are no other
| remaining discussion venues for one of my hobbies. I looked at
| the new-Reddit interface and shuddered: ads are being shown
| among comments, and many comments are hidden by defaul because
| apparently discussion and community brings insufficient
| engagement for a modern ad-based internet business. Even if I
| and a tiny, tiny percentage of people are still using the old-
| Reddit interface, obviously the overall culture there is going
| to be molded by the default one.
| Espressosaurus wrote:
| Old reddit is unfortunately just a rounding error. I weep for
| the day they decide to kill it.
| noir_lord wrote:
| I don't, the utility of reddit has declined over time for
| me but there are still a handful of reddits that I enjoy
| but them killing old.reddit.com is absolutely what will
| push me off the platform entirely.
|
| Though at this point I spend (or waste depending on PoV)
| much less time on reddit than I used to.
| dingnuts wrote:
| weep? I'd finally be free. I wish this site would disappear
| too. Whoever designed these algorithms got me good, at a
| young age, and I don't think these sites have been a net
| positive overall or on me personally
| entropie wrote:
| Iam nearly 15 years on reddit now and I would miss it if
| i cant use old. or a good client. Iam sure sooner or
| later it will happen and ill most probably leave.
|
| Reddits quality went downhill over the years but there is
| more or less no successor/competitor. It will be over and
| buried forever. Eternal september gets them all.
|
| Side note: be free if you want to and dont make it
| dependent on decisions others do for you.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| We are already free. If we keep returning to a few
| subreddits, it's because we can't find an equivalent
| community elsewhere. If they kill the old interface,
| we'll eventually use the new one if there are no other
| alternatives, no need to lie to ourselves.
| sssilver wrote:
| My favorite Reddit UX scam is that you tap on comments to
| collapse them along with their children, UNLESS they're an ad
| that masks itself exactly like a comment in which case you
| tap it with the intent of collapsing it, but instead you
| inadvertently increase RDDT shareholder value (at the expense
| of the time you waste closing the webview)!
| anoncow wrote:
| If I accidentally did it Adsense would ban me.
| webspinner wrote:
| Do it anyway! Then you have a case against them.
| frank_nitti wrote:
| Not to mention that, at least on the iOS app, the button to
| close an ad is in a totally different place than the rest
| of the UI screens, which is always in the top-left of the
| screen. A small "X" is placed in the middle-left of the ad
| image, to make you spend an extra second finding it, which
| I would assume they are happy to report as a user
| engagement metric to their advertisers.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| I think it's possible to remove ads with reddit revanced
| spicybright wrote:
| I refuse to use reddit with it's modern UI. Once
| old.reddit.com dies I'm hanging up my spurs
| Loughla wrote:
| I left when they killed 3rd party app access.
|
| Honestly even the curated subs I was a part of were
| pretty toxic or echo-chambery now that I've had time to
| look back
| anukin wrote:
| The biggest problem is that Lemmy is no substitute for
| Reddit. Majority of it is run by tankies and people
| professing extreme left views.
| nekusar wrote:
| "Extreme left" said by someone likely from the USA is
| slightly left-of-center basically anywhere else.
|
| The USA democrats and "left" have been overton window'ed
| so hard that a actual democratic socialist, Mamdani, is
| compared to being a communist.
| https://nypost.com/cover/november-5-2025/
|
| There's also hundreds of Lemmy federated servers. I'm
| sure some are actual communist. But there's plenty for
| all walks of life. And it's like Mastodon in that regard.
|
| And honestly, if "killing SNAP and other public benefits
| for poor people" is capitalist, I want nothing to do with
| that. That is completely ethically bankrupt. Doubly so
| being one of the richest countries in the world.
| Absolutely 0 people should be starving. And I'd also say
| that 0 people should be involuntarily homeless. (some may
| want to, and choose to be vagabonds and travel. they
| should have that right! but they should also be able to
| choose to have a home.)
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| The OP says tankies. Those kinds of extreme left are
| extreme even by non-USA standards. A European-style
| democratic socialist like Mamdani would be, one hopes, to
| the right of them. Tankies were largely forced out of
| European mainstream parties after the shocks of 1937,
| 1956 and 1968.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| A better way to think of it is that the western "left"
| isn't part of the global left. Using tankie unironically
| is a classic example.
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm saying you don't even need a substitute. Genuinely
| looking back, I was more anxious when I would browse
| reddit in my free time.
|
| I promise, disengage from social media (and the doom news
| cycle for that matter) and you'll be happier, or at least
| you'll worry about stuff you can control instead of stuff
| you can't.
|
| Except hn. Never disengage from hn.
| chistev wrote:
| Where would you go to? Hacker new?
| rurp wrote:
| I don't know how anyone can use the official reddit mobile
| app for more than 5 minutes. Between the ads and terrible
| interface it's an awful experience. But I also hate facebook
| so I'm clearly not the target audience for this stuff.
|
| RedReader is a much better interface but lately has been
| having issues for me so I just haven't been using reddit. If
| and when they kill that client I'll be done with the
| platform.
| derbOac wrote:
| Maybe I'm in the minority, but with ad blockers I never see
| ads on Reddit. I honestly don't think I've ever seen an ad on
| Reddit at all, with a tiny exception for ads for other Reddit
| offerings, which is very recent for me.
|
| Not saying they're not on there, but the ad blockers must be
| doing a pretty good job on that site.
| webspinner wrote:
| I don't usually see them either!
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| I first joined reddit in 2010 because it was the best place
| to see other people's minecraft creations. I no longer have
| an account but by far the most commonly suggested videos for
| me when I view the front page without an account are
|
| 1. Car crashes
|
| 2. Street/bum fights
|
| 3. Conspiracy theory content (UFOs, Anti-vax, chemtrails)
|
| 4. Anti-semitic videos (one such video was titled "Kanye was
| right about everything")
|
| 5. Anti-muslim videos (weirdly I get a lot of Indian majority
| subreddits that post a lot of hate videos about
| Pakistan/Muslims)
|
| Every single one of these categories produces feelings of
| outrage. Reddit has just become a fucking hate machine. Not
| just hate toward other races, but hate toward the entire
| human race. Every video shows someone doing some anti-social
| shit, like people driving like total assholes, or running
| people over, or getting hit by a train after cutting off
| traffic, or beating each other senseless in public. In the
| 1990s there was a huge outcry over violence in media because
| of Mortal Kombat, Doom, and The Matrix, but here we are today
| watching actual people die on dashcams regularly. This has to
| be just _bad_ for us on a really primal level
| webspinner wrote:
| OK maybe try to escape the algorithm? This is different
| with Reddit, though. You'd have to figure out which
| settings you need to change.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It's wild how many fan subreddits end up turning into hate
| boards for the sub's alleged purpose.
| stdclass wrote:
| > since there are no other remaining discussion venues for
| one of my hobbies
|
| maybe you find a suitable board on 4chan
| webspinner wrote:
| I'm leaving Reddit because of all this!
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| There are Firefox extensions that monkeypatch the old UI with
| usability enhancements and force a redirect for all reddit
| links.
| damnesian wrote:
| I never use the app, only login to old. and when old is taken
| away, I will take my marbles and go home.
| knicholes wrote:
| I've found a page on Facebook that regularly posts single white
| mothers with black babies on supposed dating profiles with very
| demanding requirements for men. The comments are loaded with
| people saying that they deserve their current situation,
| enforcing racial stereotypes, etc. It's not hard to see that
| these are AI generated, as there are maybe 5-8 posts a day like
| this, and the images are pretty clearly AI generated.
| Regardless, they get the engagement, and they sell the shirts.
| Easy way to automate a business, I guess, but at what cost?!
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| Could you give me some searching clues to hunt down this or a
| similar profile?
| ekidd wrote:
| Several of the Reddit "AmITheAsshole"-style subs have a
| significant number of posts which are either AI or sloppy
| creative writing.
|
| Mass-produced outrage bait isn't new, and it's available in
| a thousand flavors. But AI has accelerated this process, at
| least for people who don't notice when they're getting
| played (or who don't want to notice).
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| I don't have a link, but I have seen exactly what he's
| talking about, which probably means that it is an
| established business model and multiple actors are doing
| it.
|
| A similar thing I have randomly come across multiple times
| on YouTube are videos consisting of a still AI image of a
| white person mistreating a black person (e.g. a white
| police officer screaming with rage at a black man eating in
| a diner) and an AI voiceover text telling a GPT-generated
| story hashtagged #heartwarming, e.g. "The white police
| officer was violent against the black man... What he didn't
| know was this was a highly decorated veteran!"
|
| Some of these are clearly getting picked up by the
| algorithm and drawing hundreds of thousands of views. The
| factories behind these are probably halfway around the
| world but realized the race relations of a large economy
| can be exploited for profit or geopolitics.
| randycupertino wrote:
| Here are a few examples of ones where right-wing
| influencers are making AI-shop videos of people complaining
| about losing SNAP benefits:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPeopleTwitter/comments/1ojydg
| q...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/themayormccheese/comments/1ojtbwz/
| a...
|
| Note how that second one all uses the same script, "I have
| 7 babies from 7 different baby daddies!"
| wslh wrote:
| Just a few hours ago, I was trying to find the profile of an
| excellent swimmer I met at dinner yesterday. I knew his first
| name and the club he swims in, so I searched his name together
| with the club and "swimming" on Instagram without using the
| keyword club. Almost all the results were attractive girls
| posing in swimsuits, but none were actual amateur swimmers. The
| guy I was looking for didn't appear at all.
|
| BTW, mi Instagram account is just a placeholder and I can't
| imagine an algorithm suggesting that content. It seems like a
| default suggestion.
| daveguy wrote:
| > ...I can't imagine an algorithm suggesting that content. It
| seems like a default suggestion.
|
| This implies that the default suggestion isn't a data
| analyzed soup of what people of a given age / location /
| demographic / search text are most likely to respond to. Even
| if it is your first time to log on to a platform it is very
| much algorithm driven.
| pier25 wrote:
| > _all the comments were "cute!" "adorable" and "love this!"_
|
| Probably bots?
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'm pretty surprised by how fooled normal people are by all
| this AI-sludge, and/or how accepting they are of all this low-
| effort content. My reaction to this stuff is the same as yours:
| please don't clog the internet up with all this fake content!
| But everyone else in my life thinks it's great, and sometimes
| don't believe me when I point out it's obviously AI generated.
| I think people are already totally fooled and think it's real.
| mediaman wrote:
| Cultural antibodies take a long time to develop. In twenty
| years you will see more common resistance to what's being
| produced today, but less to whatever new innovation is
| released then.
|
| See, for example, the slowly declining efficacy of banner
| ads, as each cohort of computer user learned to ignore them
| but they still retained efficacy on newer vintages of users.
| webspinner wrote:
| I have the exact same response!
| chemotaxis wrote:
| > I'm pretty surprised by how fooled normal people are by all
| this AI-sludge, and/or how accepting they are of all this
| low-effort content. My reaction to this stuff is the same as
| yours: please don't clog the internet up with all this fake
| content!
|
| I instinctively want to blame AI, but on some level, I think
| the problem runs deeper: it's that we are for some reason
| compelled to consume content where it _just doesn 't matter_
| if it's real or not. It has no bearing on your life. You just
| want to spend your time scrolling through heartwarming
| stories about complete strangers, or through rage-bait that
| reinforces your political beliefs. Ethically, I see a
| difference between telling you true stories and lies. But if
| we're being honest with ourselves... what changes if the
| kitten rescued from a storm sewer is actually just gen AI?
|
| This isn't even a Facebook thing. 24-hour news networks and
| many newspapers perfected this craft before. Endless streams
| of celebrity gossip and stories about stranded / rescued
| pets, written for no reason other than to satisfy this weird
| craving among the readers.
|
| Each step along the way lowers the bar for feeding you the
| content and allows it to be tailored better, but I don't know
| what the fix here is. Short of banning the internet and
| forcing people to go outside more.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| I will admit, I consider myself pretty tech savvy and I am
| having a harder time these days identifying AI-generated
| content (aside from the obvious ones).
|
| I find myself squinting hard at interior design pictures on
| Pinterest to see if they're real, I can never be sure with an
| instagram video, and even blogs and comments are getting
| harder to tell.
|
| And I think the fact that I am having a harder time
| distinguishing reality from AI worries me greatly that I
| would be susceptible to misinformation if I venture outside
| of trusted sources.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Moderators really need to start cracking down on this stuff. If
| nothing else just posts per week limits or something.
| tarsinge wrote:
| Keep in mind the FB algorithm is likely showing you that
| content more than to others since it might have detected it'd
| be annoying to you (and that results in better engagement
| metrics).
| thih9 wrote:
| Funny to complain about content marketing that happens outside
| of HN, when content marketing is so popular here.
|
| E.g. in this recent 800+ point submission[1] a company presents
| their product as the ultimate alternative to PaaS, their use
| case seems shallow and presents their product in positive light
| only.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45661253
| mihaic wrote:
| I think it's not at all self-contradicting.
|
| HN is a niche forum that is all about making things that
| scale. Most human interactions shouldn't scale, there's no
| space for them to be absorbed except by other humans.
|
| Only the very top should scale down, and that can be done in
| more ways, some more ethical than others.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > in a local facebook group for my town ... [someone posts AI
| promos]
|
| > I opened the comments expecting to see other people
| complaining
|
| people are less confrontational the more local it is
| keiferski wrote:
| I think it's a generational thing. Younger people don't really
| use Facebook very much and are much more active on TikTok and
| instagram, both of which I would describe as semi-hostile to
| AI, or at least the kind of lazy slop AI you're talking about.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| The internet will be more and more ai stuff.
|
| At the end of the day, people don't care if it's real or not as
| long as it's either entertaining or tells them what they want
| to hear.
| Mars008 wrote:
| Have you seen sci-fi movies? It's all fake! And people are
| happy with this. Same here, it becomes annoying only after some
| time. Most didn't get to this point yet. By the time they get
| quality will be better, so like new again. After that even
| adults will have hard time telling apart reality from
| generated. Like little kids believe dreams are true.
| soperj wrote:
| I'm anti-social media and AI, but I would like to submit:
|
| Schfifty Five https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XccUMOQ978
| bgwalter wrote:
| "AI" absolutely contributes to brain rot. Google "AI" is just a
| status quo propagandist that makes things up, misunderstands
| questions and berates the "user" if the "user" dares to
| contradict. It is worse than any legacy media. It also weaves in
| how awesome "AI" is and how the "user" should treat "AI" with
| respect, preferably like a human.
|
| You should definitely keep minors away from this dangerous
| brainwashing.
|
| Even better "AI"s lead to outsourcing of thought, search
| capabilities, speed reading and critical reflection.
| monospacegames wrote:
| It's funny how multiple commenters here are reacting to this
| article by saying that older media is also bad when the article
| itself is about specific observations about how relying on AI and
| overengaging in social media can lead to detrimental outcomes.
|
| Ironically this tendency to form an opinion without investing
| time might also be a form of brain rot.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| Using a HN post to talk about something unrelated you wanted to
| talk about anyway, has been part of HN for years. Probably
| because a lot of people feel with the rise of 140-character
| type social media, there are fewer and fewer venues on the
| internet where you can substantially talk to educated and non-
| brand-hustling people about the things that you think about.
| dingnuts wrote:
| this website exists as an advertisement for a brand. the
| people here are hustling harder than anywhere! it's worse
| than LinkedIn! that's why this website is a constant dick
| measuring contest -- it's a news site run by a venture
| capitalist firm about startups!
|
| Why would you think this place is not absolutely full of
| shills?
|
| the Internet is so dead, I'm sure I'm arguing with a bot. I
| need to go outside..
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| HN is definitely founded by a creepy VC firm and _some_ of
| the posts get comments by startup-culture hustlers. But
| most posts don 't. Instead you find the same broad
| population of people looking for news for nerds that used
| to be on Slashdot etc.
|
| HN's interface, and showing just a username in a tiny font,
| honestly gives me less of that tiring feeling of people
| around me hustling a personal brand, than even the
| fediverse which is supposedly "healthy social media".
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I hear you about being very sad about the internet "dying"
| and real engagement being gone.
|
| HN is full of bullshit, shills, charlatans, and extremely
| bad moderation/rules. Yet it, like Linkedin, dramatically
| increases your earning potential if you post here.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Uhh, the yc job board is essentially a different site
| entirely than this forum.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Yes and it's largely made the site lose the rigor it used to
| have. You compare it to Slashdot downthread which I don't
| think is a good thing. The reason I joined this site so long
| ago is because Slashdot was more interested in tech culture
| shibboleths than actual tech or business. Natalie Portman!!
| Hot grits! Embrace, extend, extinguish!!
|
| Unfortunate to see the same happen here but that's life I
| guess. The fact that the news for nerds group is so desperate
| to find community that they glom onto every IRC and website
| they can is a bit sad but I guess it's the nature of online
| cultures. But oh yeah enshittificiation and the year of the
| Linux desktop is tomorrow and Meta is going down down down or
| something right?
|
| On the other hand it's funny how folks who like that culture
| keep putting it on a pedestal. Why? It contains little
| predictive power. It teaches little. It's just about opining.
| Is it that fulfilling to find online bytes that share your
| opinions? I guess I use my real life friends and family for
| that.
|
| It's social media in a nutshell. We're more interested in
| finding people like us than confronting reality. When that
| happens at scale, you lose mass consensus. HN is but one
| piece of that.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| I was on Slashdot 1998-2004 and found plenty of substantial
| tech discussion. The meme culture you mentioned was there,
| but it was usually in posts downvoted into invisibility
| unless you deliberately chose to browse at -1.
|
| > I guess I use my real life friends and family for that.
|
| In my region, I never had real-life friends I could shoot
| the shit about FOSS geekdom with. And nearly all of my
| friends forged in youth through shared interest in
| intellectual topics, drifted away from that as they married
| and had children and had to spend all their waking hours on
| family or working to support family.
|
| Where I live has a traditional cafe culture, so there is a
| third place for men to go to daily and interact, but the
| topics that can be talked about there are very limited
| indeed, so obviously nerds "glom onto" internet
| communities.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > I was on Slashdot 1998-2004 and found plenty of
| substantial tech discussion.
|
| I think this was, roughly, peak Slashdot (tho I'll admit
| I was probably too young to be a good judge of it at this
| point.) From 2004 the meme discussions started overriding
| a lot of the regular discussion, and by 2007 ish the site
| was constantly getting derailed into EEE threads the way
| HN is constantly getting derailed into enshittification
| threads.
|
| > Where I live has a traditional cafe culture, so there
| is a third place for men to go to daily and interact, but
| the topics that can be talked about there are very
| limited indeed, so obviously nerds "glom onto" internet
| communities.
|
| My point of contention is that, this form of FOSS geekdom
| culture has many, many venues. Do you want to hop onto
| IRC? HN? Reddit? Discord? It may not be mainstream but it
| occupies the internet in a deep, fundamental way. On the
| other hand actual hard-nosed technical or business
| content is a lot, lot rarer. The loss of a site that
| discusses tech to become Yet Another FOSS Geek Social
| Site is to me a much sadder thing; there's a lot fewer of
| the former and a lot more of the latter. But, as you say,
| I've noticed a lot of the users are really desperate for
| a social venue to talk about tech nerd culture and so
| that's what crowds out all the other discussion.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| > derailed into EEE threads the way HN is constantly
| getting derailed into enshittification threads
|
| And yet in hindsight, this seems to have been a pretty
| accurate way of looking at developments.
|
| Anyway, there's a difference between chit-chat that is
| just inane posting of the same old memes, and long-form-
| text chit-chat where people occasionally learn something
| new. IRC is no substitute, as long-form text isn't part
| of the culture and some channels discourage social
| activity entirely. Reddit is enshittified and, because
| the standard input device is a phone screen, so hostile
| to long-form text that posting just a couple of solid
| paragraphs marks you out as a weirdo who will get
| downvoted.
|
| You like business news, but IMO that's the worst part of
| HN. For a site based on "anything that gratifies one's
| intellectual curiosity", most people who are working hard
| to develop a startup simply don't have the leisure time
| for a wide range of interests. That's why posts on the
| humanities here often draw some less-than-informed
| responses, even though many nerds would see them as
| important a part of the life of the mind as hacking
| computers.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > You like business news, but IMO that's the worst part
| of HN.
|
| I'd be much happier with an HN that actually talks about
| tech and nothing else. It's unclear to me why the 3000th
| thread about social media being evil needs 1000 posts of
| armchair opinion or how every thread about Meta devolves
| into declarations about how the company will implode
| (why? Because God will smite it for its sins? Lol.) Or
| whether or not AI will doom is all. The gravity of
| activity on this site is tech culture. It's not really
| tech. Obviously a certain person really enjoys this
| culture. But I'm not more intelligent, aware, or even
| better informed because of it. My take is the folks that
| enjoy this culture don't care much in the same way nobody
| cares about these things at a sports bar or cafe.
|
| My guess is the reason I joined HN (this is my 2nd
| account, my first was in 2007) and why someone joins the
| site now is very different. Back then I was interested to
| see the developments on web tech. We watched Javascript
| build and mature into today's browser language. We
| watched the rise of dynamic languages, a rebound to
| static languages, and now interesting developments like
| Rust and Zig. TCP got improvements, now we have things
| like WebRTC, QUIC, Homa, and gRPC. But I suspect today
| people join here because they want to talk about whether
| AI will steal their jobs and are only tangentially
| interested in how LLMs and transformers actually work.
| cloverich wrote:
| > We're more interested in finding people like us than
| confronting reality.
|
| The reality is there arent many people like us outside of
| work. I would love to be able to talk about this kind of
| stuff irl but in all my years none of my irl friends,
| acquaintences, etc, are more than remotely interested in
| the kinds of topics that come up here. There is a distinct
| difference between echo chambers where the opinions are
| common (politics), and thread discussions like on HN where
| real life versions are fleetingly rare. I dont think its
| entirely fair to conflate the two. eg:
|
| > Is it that fulfilling to find online bytes that share
| your opinions?
|
| I discuss on HN as much to find and genuinely debate
| alternative opinions, and IME thats a pretty common
| pattern. i have learned so much reading other comments,
| formulating thoughtful responses to others, and have others
| break down / extend / critique my own shared opinions. Its
| what makes HN enjoyable and also the primary way its
| different than other social media sites.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45848504
|
| 206 points and 129 points on a 47 word blog post where
| most of the thread is about what people think about the
| title.
|
| Are you sure it's actually different from other social
| media sites or do you just find it more relevant to you
| than the others?
| tekbruh9000 wrote:
| Here's an example of how reliance on traditional media leads to
| detrimental outcomes: https://ourworldindata.org/does-the-news-
| reflect-what-we-die...
|
| Anyone from far away lands, kings, priests, CEOs, rando on HN
| reaching into your mind... all engaged in information shaping
| to encourage allegiance. It makes instinctual sense for NY
| Times editors to get others to risk their health through
| limited coverage. Biology is self selecting and instinctual to
| the core; it does not run in high minded philosophy, just
| physics. The only way to confirm our efforts now matter is stay
| alive longer to verify. Something entropy does not afford our
| individual biology.
|
| I have taken to ignoring those not on the cutting edge of
| health science and essential technology for food safety and
| production. Everyone else is gaming clicks.
| sureglymop wrote:
| I don't really understand how they used "brainrot". I thought
| brain rot was this generations surrealism, a type of art?
|
| By all means, study the detrimental effects of social media and
| AI on our brains but don't correlate it with people creating
| art _just because_.
| triMichael wrote:
| There are two types of "brainrot" that are related but not
| the same. Essentially brainrot is anything that is anti-
| thinking.
|
| The first type of brainrot is what happens when you let other
| things think for you and your thoughts and opinions become
| not your own. AI is anti-thinking because you can let the
| machine think for you. Social media is anti-thinking because
| you can let other peoples' opinions think for you.
|
| On the other hand, memes actually communicate ideas. For
| example, The Simpsons Ralph meme "I'm in danger" and the dog
| on fire "This is fine" memes both represent understanding
| being in a dangerous situation while doing nothing about it.
| Star Trek was actually way ahead of its time with the episode
| "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" which was about a culture that
| used memes as communication.
|
| So what do you get when you combine brainrot ("anti-
| thinking") with memes? You get brainrot memes, which is the
| second type of brainrot. For example, 6-7. 6-7 doesn't
| communicate ideas. It doesn't mean anything. Instead, it
| communicates the opposite of an idea. So when someone says
| "6-7", they are embracing using language in an anti-thinking
| way. In this way, brainrot memes can be thought of more as an
| anti-meme. It's as contagious as an idea, but since it
| doesn't contain any information, it acts more like a virus.
| So brainrot memes are essentially mind-viruses that embrace
| the lack of thinking that comes with brainrot.
| sureglymop wrote:
| > So when someone says "6-7", they are embracing using
| language in an anti-thinking way.
|
| Using language in an anti-thinking way seems like a
| somewhat interestingly thought through mission though. If
| that's even the case.
|
| The fact that you try to think about it that much though is
| arguably what makes it almost funny.
|
| Art doesn't have to make you think or convey any ideas.
| L'art pour l'art. It doesn't matter if it's on TikTok or
| wherever.
| hvs wrote:
| Anything that contributes to you not needing to actually "think"
| and instead just "react" is going to be bad for you because it is
| simply engaging your reward system. The only way LLMs can be a
| net good is if they free you from drudgery and allow you to work
| harder on the things that actually matter. (Think dishwashers and
| laundry machines). If you are using them as an "easy button" so
| you can finish your work (poorly) to have more time to scroll
| your timeline then yes, you are turning your brain into mush.
|
| I'm purposefully not engaging with whether LLMs are actually even
| good at what they do, which is another discussion.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| I think this is true of just about any technology. It will make
| lazy people lazier and help productive people get more done in
| less time. It's all about where the motivation is for each
| individual.
| chaseadam17 wrote:
| Why hasn't a social media platform with mandatory verification to
| prove users are unique humans taken off yet? Still too hard to
| break the existing network effects?
| sssilver wrote:
| How would such verification work at planetary scale?
| floren wrote:
| Who cares about planetary scale? Back when your networking
| reach was largely limited by the size of your area code,
| local BBSes had user verification and were incredibly
| popular.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Nextdoor is the only social network I have used that
| confirms your real-life location, and it's not any better
| than the planetary scale sites. BBSes were better due to
| how users self-selected into them. Small geographic
| clusters don't inherently promote quality.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| Most platforms for the last decade have used phone numbers
| for real-human detection. Facebook is well known to quickly
| lock new signups' accounts until they give a phone number.
| Obviously that can be gamed by some people in some places,
| but all countries on earth have mobile phones now and
| purchase of a SIM card often requires showing ID to
| authorities.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| how would a phone number proof uniqueness though? I can buy
| multiple SIM cards even with showing ID
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Anonymity is more important, and verification systems can
| always be gamed. To add, given what you see well known people
| post under their real name, including Trump posting a video of
| himself shitting all over Americans, I don't understand what
| benefit you're expecting to get.
| pjc50 wrote:
| That's Facebook. Just because it's mandatory doesn't mean
| people aren't going to cheat it. And cheating is the problem.
| Verifying that it's an actual human sitting at the keyboard is
| basically an exam proctoring level problem. Otherwise people
| will just produce vast farms of accounts.
|
| AI of course makes it easier to fake whatever kind of evidence
| the verifier is asking for: there will be an arms race between
| fake AI and verification AI.
|
| (the nearest to verified membership I've actually seen in
| practice was, oddly, Debian developers - you had to get a key
| signed in person to be in the club)
| Mabusto wrote:
| I think we'll start to see AI as any other tool that can atrophy
| your natural faculties. You can use a wheelchair to get
| everywhere, but your leg muscles will start to wither, but a
| wheeled vehicle for going longer distances is a genuinely useful
| tool.
|
| Reaching for AI as a _substitute_ for thinking is bad, but
| reaching for it as a tool to assist thinking is good; you just
| need to be honest about whether it's your brain in the driver's
| seat or the chat bot.
| api wrote:
| Ancient Egyptians on writing:
|
| "For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of
| those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their
| memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters
| which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of
| their own memory within them."
|
| https://www.anthologialitt.com/post/the-god-thoth-and-the-in...
|
| This discourse is as old as humanity. Every tool makes us
| stronger but also paradoxically weaker.
| tharne wrote:
| > This discourse is as old as humanity. Every tool makes us
| stronger but also paradoxically weaker.
|
| Of course that statement is true for every tool, but what's
| missing from the discussion is whether the trade off is worth
| it. Even truly terrible things have benefits. Smoking
| cigarettes makes it easier to maintain a healthy weight, this
| is well documented. Smoking has also been shown to reduce
| anxiety in some people. The negative consequences that
| cigarettes introduce, however, are so horrific that no one in
| their right mind would recommend that someone take up
| smoking, even if there are some demonstrable benefits to it.
| paddleon wrote:
| Curious if we could test/compare (popluation-level) memory
| skills before/after writing was introduced to the population.
|
| I want to say "I remember things better when I write them
| down", and because I think I'm a smart person I think my
| memory is good.
|
| I don't know how well I'd remember things if I'd spent a
| large portion of my life building memorization skills. Maybe
| I could be 100x better at memory if I exercised it more?
| afavour wrote:
| Yes, IMO this is going to start becoming visible sooner rather
| than later. College students that defer to ChatGPT to form
| arguments for them are going to graduate, sit for an in-person
| job interview and discover they haven't had to think fast, with
| their own brain, in years. It won't be pretty.
| ryandrake wrote:
| But who is going to crack first? Will job applicants somehow
| remove their borg implants and learn to think on their own?
| Or will businesses give in and admit that nobody can think
| for themselves anymore, allowing applicants to use ChatGPT
| during their interviews (knowing that they're probably going
| to need to use it on the job, too).
| jimbokun wrote:
| Or businesses just use ChatGPT to replace the entry level
| employee.
| daveguy wrote:
| I can't wait for the first company to do this. I hope
| someone comes around to do a good post mortem from the
| rubble.
| tharne wrote:
| > Reaching for AI as a _substitute_ for thinking is bad, but
| reaching for it as a tool to assist thinking is good; you just
| need to be honest about whether it's your brain in the driver's
| seat or the chat bot.
|
| I think this is generally true, but human nature being what it
| is, the vast majority of people will use AI as a substitute for
| thinking rather than a tool to assist thinking. You can already
| see this from casual observation of today's AI users.
|
| As I've grown older, I've noticed that more often than not,
| when someone says something to effect of, "Thing X can cause
| problems, but is great if used properly", you can be almost
| 100% certain that Thing X is going to cause very large problems
| and practically no one is going to use it correctly.
| gregates wrote:
| Unfortunately, "X is just a tool and is super useful when
| used properly, all things are both bad in excess and good in
| moderation, what you gonna do?" is exactly the type of
| conclusion that a chat bot is likely to reach. Doesn't really
| say anything, appears to express sophistication and wisdom by
| being more "nuanced" than an actual position, demands nothing
| of your audience, not likely to get downvotes on social
| media, etc.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Proper use of anything that has a big downside is in direct
| opposition to making money, sadly.
| bloppe wrote:
| This is true if you're only looking at the short term. In
| the long term, quality does matter.
| PetitPrince wrote:
| Steve Jobs "bicycle for the mind" analogy is more potent than I
| initially thought.
|
| When got past the bicycle phase where we augment our body with
| technology but still leave room for our body to improve. We got
| into the automobile phase where only the goal matter and the
| body is not participating (and improving) anymore.
|
| (well, except maybe for F1 which are bona fide athlete, but
| your average driver in a traffic jam is most certainly not a F1
| driver)
| pjc50 wrote:
| I don't think the "tool weakening" discourse is strong enough:
| it overlooks the aversarial nature of the modern internet.
| There are humans actively intending to weaken you for various
| reasons, either to sell you stuff or to weaken you
| ideologically by making you hate other humans such as in this
| comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45848215
|
| See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45845772 "meta
| predicted 10% of revenue came from scams"
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >You can use a wheelchair to get everywhere, but your leg
| muscles will start to wither
|
| I don't know if they still exists but there was a (Dutch, I
| think) company that makes non-electric lifts and tools for
| elderly people at home that _require_ muscle effort from the
| people using them. Purely augmentative tools that don 't work
| without input.
|
| And that is how it needs to be. Framing this as choice is
| already wrong. Any tool that is agnostic or conducive to
| forfeiting agency _will_ be used in wrong ways. It 's not
| enough to make the healthy part optional, your brain will not
| be in the driver seat given how human beings work.
|
| People in Japan are slim with no spending while people in the
| US remain obese while spending billions exactly because to the
| Japanese this isn't a choice, it's one the environment makes
| for them. If you rely on people "keeping themselves honest"
| you've already lost.
| daveguy wrote:
| I believe you are thinking of the Vertiwalk lift:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fYqHWDt5wRk
| Liquix wrote:
| there seems to be a parallel with the industrial revolution -
| being fit and having muscles used to be the norm when everyone
| worked the fields all day. but now that grocery stores and
| sedentary jobs have made exercise optional. so choosing to
| pursue fitness signals to others that one is disciplined, takes
| pride in their appearance, etc.
|
| i can see the next couple generations of AI agents causing the
| same effect on reading, critical thinking, and intelligence in
| general. thinking is no longer necessary with AI agents, so
| maybe cultivating one's ability to think will become
| optional/personal pursuits which send similar signals.
| brailsafe wrote:
| > You can use a wheelchair to get everywhere, but your leg
| muscles will start to wither
|
| Although it's not to the same degree of atrophy, I've been
| thinking of cars the same way. They're too easy to use once you
| have them, just press the pedal, so you stop walking and
| everything becomes a matter of driving distance, which makes it
| acceptable to distribute commercial activity in stupid little
| pockets of car destinations and avenues separated from each
| other by noise, pollution, and danger. People may not
| physically atrophy to the point of having no leg muscles, but
| their tolerance for walking a km becomes much more strained and
| their appreciation for investment in public transport lessens.
| They don't see or speak to people as much because they're
| always in their portable silo. You burn less calories, it's
| easier to gain weight, and people discount the value in having
| a gym within walking distance.
|
| It's tough to reconcile it with being a functional tool,
| because although I could conceivably use it as one and buy one,
| I know that it can become an addiction.
| maxdo wrote:
| I'm doing most complicated projects I ever work , I would not
| even try to implement them without AI. My brain is exploding of
| complexity every time , I passively learn lots of topics I only
| had a vague understanding in the past
| tharne wrote:
| > I'm doing most complicated projects I ever work , I would not
| even try to implement them without AI. My brain is exploding of
| complexity every time , I passively learn lots of topics I only
| had a vague understanding in the past
|
| This sentence is very poorly written and ironically is
| undermining the very case you're trying to make.
| sdwr wrote:
| It's pretty clearly not a native English speaker
| tharne wrote:
| That's fine; I wasn't referring to the academic quality the
| grammar. It's the ideas themselves that are muddled and
| unclear. Proficiency in given language and the ability to
| express oneself clearly are not as related as we typically
| think they are.
|
| I know plenty of folks with poor English who are
| nonetheless very clear and concise when it comes to
| expressing their thoughts in English. I also know many
| native English speakers who, despite being proficient in
| the language, cannot express a lot their ideas clearly or
| concisely.
| Nightloaf wrote:
| The ideas seem fairly clear to me. They're working on
| projects that are much more complex than what they were
| able to approach before, and they're able to dive into
| topics that were previously out of reach because of AI
| assistance. The grammar may not be perfect, but the point
| is understandable.
|
| If you want to give feedback, the Hacker News guidelines
| encourage responding to the strongest interpretation of
| someone's argument. Instead of criticizing the way
| something is written, you could rewrite it in a clearer
| form to demonstrate what you mean. That way it's
| constructive, and they have something to learn from.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| What language has a space preceding commas?
| xanderlewis wrote:
| ...good question. This (standard) excuse is designed to
| make you feel bad for potentially insulting someone
| trying their hardest, but it doesn't make any sense.
| moravak1984 wrote:
| You could add writing to that list of topics...
| Nightloaf wrote:
| Could you focus on contributing something meaningful to the
| discussion instead of adding snarky insults?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| entropie wrote:
| > "I'm pretty frightened, to be frank," Dr. Melumad said. "I'm
| worried about younger folks not knowing how to conduct a
| traditional Google search."
|
| Well, this guy obviously didn't get the memo that Google search
| isn't what it was 10 years ago and is total junk.
|
| It's not just AI brain rot. Brain rot is everywhere. Social
| media, linear TV, politics.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| "I'm worried about younger folks not knowing how to conduct a
| traditional Google search."
|
| This has a real "I'm afraid no one will know how to ride a
| horse when the motorcoach comes out" sense to it.
|
| The answer is, who cares? Why would a better way of doing
| something "frighten" someone. Not to say it won't come with its
| own set of issues, but technology constantly evolving/improving
| should be expected by now, but humanity remains terrified at
| even the slightest upheaval of the status quo.
| hitarpetar wrote:
| typical technological determinism. comparing AI to the
| motorcoach assumes something we cannot know yet, namely that
| the impact of AI on the next century will be comparable to
| the invention of the automobile. there's also a long list of
| negative externalities caused by automobiles. who cares?
| anyone hurt by climate change, or who lives in a grid
| organized around cars rather than people. anyone who has ever
| been killed in a car accident.
| D-Machine wrote:
| Yes, although in this case the premise is just entirely
| wrong. A "traditional Google search" doesn't work anymore
| as Google just ignores half of what you put in anyway, and
| even vigorous quoting and Google-fu still generally just
| returns SEO garbage. Whereas e.g. Kagi is another world
| (proving that "knowing how to search" is not actually the
| problem anyway).
| xanderlewis wrote:
| > a better way of doing something
|
| Your argument fails right here because you're supposing
| something that isn't true. LLMs are better than search
| engines for _some_ things, but you 're speaking as if they're
| a replacement for what came before. They're absolutely not.
| Reading books -- going to the original source rather than
| relying on a stochastic facsimile -- is never going to go
| away, even if some of us are too lazy to ever do so. Their
| loss.
|
| Put another way: leaving aside non-practical aspects of the
| experience, the car does a better job of getting you from A
| to B than a horse does. An LLM does not 'do a better job'
| than a book. Maybe in some cases it's more useful, but it's
| simply not a replacement. Perhaps a combination is best: use
| the LLM to interpolate and find your way around the
| literature, and then go and hunt down the _real_ source
| material. The same cannot be said of the car /horse
| comparison.
| jaykru wrote:
| For posterity: https://archive.ph/jsJgf
| throwaway106382 wrote:
| Contribute? That's basically its only purpose now, rot your brain
| with a dopamine drip and show you a bajillion ads. Now with AI
| slopgen being baked right into most of them it's been set into
| overdrive.
|
| Deleted all my social media accounts except Youtube (but I use
| Unhook to remove everything except my subscriptions and the
| search). Haven't felt better. I use Telegram and Whatsapp and SMS
| to keep in touch with friends and family, nothing connected to
| any social app. I avoid all of the social-media-lite features in
| those apps like the plague.
| carabiner wrote:
| I think it's much healthier to spend time playing video games,
| watching netflix/youtube, than on social media.
| AIorNot wrote:
| I found this in the article to be pretty funny
|
| "I'm pretty frightened, to be frank," Dr. Melumad said. "I'm
| worried about younger folks not knowing how to conduct a
| traditional Google search."
|
| 20 years ago I remember all the scary articles/studies about the
| web ruining education.
|
| e.g
|
| Net cheaters (from link below)
|
| The ease of gathering information on the Internet has a darker
| side. The simplicity of finding out things on the Web also makes
| it easy for students to cheat. Cutting and pasting text from a
| Web site and into a paper is effortless. So is wholesale copying
| or purchasing finished essays or reports. About a fifth of online
| youth (18%) say they know of someone who has used the Internet to
| cheat on a paper or test. While 9% of those who have been online
| for a year or less know someone who has cheated, 19% of those who
| have been online for 2 to 3 years and 28% of those who have been
| online for more than three years know people who have used the
| Net to cheat
|
| from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2001/09/01/main-
| report-...
| supersrdjan wrote:
| Socrates thought that writing contributed to brain rot.
|
| If I AI rots my brain than so did Google before it, and printed
| encyclopedias before that. In reality, the fact I can get my
| questions answered quickly only makes me think of more and more
| questions to ask, more things to wonder about, more problems to
| ponder.
| District5524 wrote:
| That still seems to be a problem. It was not what "Socrates
| thought", but what Plato put into Socrates' mouth in Phaedrus,
| and even this imaginary Socrates is not saying anything like
| that, just referencing an even earlier Egyptian tale: "There is
| an old Egyptian tale of Theuth, the inventor of writing,
| showing his invention to the god Thamus, who told him that he
| would only spoil men's memories and take away their
| understandings..."
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/plato/dialogues/benjamin-j...
| But that's just pedantery. The real painpoint is that just
| because there are lots of useful AI tools, it doesn't mean it's
| not dangerous at the same time for a surprising number of 8B
| people currently alive (children, elderly, mentally lazy or
| just fatigued). At the very least, they will end up being
| exploited by bandits. And if you let the bandits continue to
| exploit those who lack certain mental resistance, the bandits
| will become stronger etc.
| supersrdjan wrote:
| Can't you say the same about the printing press?
| PeaceTed wrote:
| I mean to some degree it is true in that you have the
| luxury of forgetting stuff if you know where you can get
| that information in future. I think many can agree that
| having access to written and printed word even has been a
| big positive.
|
| "I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the
| meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." Ralph
| Waldo Emerson.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| It was used in exactly the same way. You think the world
| you live in is based on the honest truth of how things
| went? Entire families and peoples have been written out of
| history, for convenience. They are kept out of history for
| "stability".
|
| Reading should help one think, but it is not to replace
| thinking...
| ares623 wrote:
| You/me in your/my current state are/is the single most
| important thing in the world.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Socrates is probably right. There are probably entirely
| different connections being made in ones brain in an oral
| culture vs written culture. Socrates was alive to see the
| transition where these differences in manners of brain activity
| were readily apparent, unlike today where all educated people
| are already "ruined" by writing and there is no control
| possible.
|
| I have seen something similar. Engineers from the analog era
| able to solve complicated calculations in their head like you
| and I might perform simple arithmetic. It is like entire
| functional capabilities have been lost thanks to being able to
| punt these tasks to a calculator in modern times. Akin to an
| animal no longer competent to make the amino acids it needs to
| survive because some other species in the environment makes
| them and can be eaten.
| supersrdjan wrote:
| I agree that those are impressive skills that are becoming
| rare and make us compare unfavorably to old schoolers. But I
| am also impressed by trackers who can follow a trail in the
| bush by observing clues invisible to ordinary people. All
| kinds of skills fell into disuse when the problems they
| solved lost importance.
|
| But we will never run out of problems to solve and new
| problems will call for new competencies.
|
| I wonder what are some of these new competencies. I can't
| think of any off the top of my head. Can you?
| webspinner wrote:
| Well, don't use that kind of social media, I suppose.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > "I'm worried about younger folks not knowing how to conduct a
| traditional Google search."
|
| Such a low bar.
| bloppe wrote:
| The wishful cynic in me sometimes thinks this might actually lead
| to a partial reversal of ageism in the workforce. It's almost
| starting to look like the kids graduating from school with
| chatgpt are actually handicapped (painting in extremely broad
| strokes; there will always be prodigies) and those who graduated
| or worked before 2022 will actually become more desirable to
| hire.
|
| I'm sure this take is at best oversimplified. Probably mostly
| wrong. But it's certainly something I will think about while
| hiring from now on
| eboynyc32 wrote:
| Such bs! Every new tech causes the disgrace of society! Music,
| films, dancing, comic books, the internet. Everything is always
| evil except the bible of course.
| bloppe wrote:
| A recent Stanford grad just told me "it's all just bots
| talking to bots", referring to students who use ChatGPT to do
| all their homework, and teachers who use ChatGPT to grade the
| work that was submitted by ChatGPT. And because of the
| pandemic, somehow people think it's now reasonable to do
| standardized testing in private with internet access. It's an
| anecdote, but she was really dissatisfied with her experience
| there. And that's one of the most prestigious schools in the
| country.
|
| Do you have a different experience in academia recently?
| ge96 wrote:
| Funny I've been trying to quit reddit and I'm just like "what do
| I do with my time" I usually have two windows: reddit on the left
| and YT on the right. I work 7 days a week and haven't made
| anything for myself code/hardware wise in a while.
|
| I think of this concept living second hand through other people's
| lives (social media) it's not living your own
| oldsklgdfth wrote:
| Lumping AI together with social media is confusing for me. One is
| a tool for the user, the other is not.
|
| If social media is a tool for anything, it is for the company to
| generate ad revenue. Sure there is value someone can extract
| (keeping in touch family). But I can also extract value from junk
| mail (using it as scrap paper for notes and lists.)
|
| AI is still a tool. I think? I have not seen any direct way that
| monetizes it through ads, yet. I expect AI with a revenue model
| will look way worse.
|
| AI is turning people dumb. I see it all the time with code slop.
| It's the old "give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish". Maybe a
| tool-using approach to AI is "should me how to do this", rather
| than "do this for me". "Show me an example of some code" is more
| useful to me than unleashing it on my project.
|
| Also, social media is obviously a sort of digital narcotic.
| Probably should be scheduled.
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